my mind on my money and my money on my mind

Got a cover today of "Gin and Juice" done by Phish that is totally awesome! It sounds like bluegrass because they invited a banjo player. The cover version really brings out the lyrics, and makes the whole song comical--you'll have fun just listening to it if you can get a copy.

Echo Park trip

April and I did our birthday camping trip without our HB's this year--hers got sick and mine was coaching. So we took off with her two little boys and headed out to Echo park on the eastern side of Dinosaur National Monument. None of us had ever been there before and so I had no idea it would be so amazing. I love desert camping, the high red sandstone walls, the white slickrock to run up on, the narrow canyons, etc. This place had those features as well as lots of vibrantly green trees (think Capitol Reef) and just behind our campsite the Green and Yampa rivers meet and provide sandy beaches. Seeing it made me really wish the HB could come because he loves camping by water and it was over the top that there was actually a soft, sandy beach.
When we first walked over to "check out the water" we ended up staying long enough for Lanik to take off his clothes and play, dragging his Woody toy through the water and then face-first through the mud, burying him in sand, and then making a castle. The next morning we had high hopes of doing a lot of hiking, but were only able to pull off one complete hike. It was a 2 mile trail that overlooked the canyon we were camping in and the river gorges. It was a perfect hike because it started drizzling not long after we got on the trail, and though it made for foggy pictures, it added that sort of ethereal feeling that only comes when you're looking through fog into the most beautiful landscape you've ever seen.
It cleared up as we walked down and we went back to the river to play some more. Later on we explored some old ranch buildings in the area built back in the 1920's. We picked up some cool rocks for Caiden and then on Sunday stopped at the dinosaur museum in Vernal. We'll definitely go back again so we can do more of the trails and show our husbands what a great place it was!

twins are badass

This morning I finished the book I was reading called “lone survivor.” It seemed especially appropriate that I finished it on mine and my twin sister’s birthday because it’s about who happens to be a twin, and ends with some notes on the bond between them. I do my reviews on goodreads.com but I have to share this one. I’m not into writing plot synopses in my reviews because I’m more concerned with what impressed me than plot details, but it’s about a Navy SEAL that survived a mission in Afghanistan when the rest of his team died. It’s about how he survived, how his teammates fell, and about his training and partially about his family’s experience in waiting for news on his condition / life. His twin brother, also a Navy SEAL kept telling his family that he knows Marcus is alive—he can feel it. I nearly started crying when I read about Marcus being saved, but I was reading it on the stair-stepper at the gym, so I didn’t. Not really. Not like I normally do. And then the editor made a note in the afterward that Marcus had been sent out on another mission a year later, as the leader of a SEAL team that his brother was on. It’s cool that they are so badass.

April and I had a pretty badass camping trip this last weekend for our birthday so I’ll be sure and get some pics up soon.

you can stand under my umbrella

Monsoon Vermont makes these umbrellas and various other products from recycled detergent boxes and other plastics in Indonesia. It's called The Scavenger Project, isn't it sweet?

The Last Unicorn

You may have watched this movie as a child and only remember a scary red bull, but if you’ve watched it as an adult you’d know there is far more to the story and it is relevant to your every waking day.

Schmendrick the magician changes the last unicorn into a woman in an effort to shield her from the red bull while she and they discover a way to find and free the other unicorns. But while she’s a woman she starts to fall in love with the prince who loves her desperately, and she forgets who she is and what she came to do, and though she knows she has a greater destiny, she wants to just love the prince. But Schmendrick pointedly tells her “there can be no happy endings in the middle of the story.”

I had a visit from the XBF last night. We dated and were good friends for a long time so it was fun to see him. It made me feel good too to realize that in most ways, I’m still the same person I was a few years ago. He is really struggling because his girl just got engaged to someone else and he wants to stop her, but is terrified of marriage. It’s hard for me to imagine not being able to move forward (I can’t stand feeling immobile), but I can understand marriage being daunting, which is why I talked about the Last Unicorn. Because I thought I did it right, I thought I wasn’t expecting complete bliss, or things to be happily ever after, but I really underestimated how difficult it can be. So now I have to remember that getting married isn’t the middle of the story and that happy endings really only come at the end.

I love the HB more than he can imagine, but I wonder all the time why I’m married. I have a very intense need for closeness, to constantly be growing closer—if I don’t feel like I’m growing closer to someone, even for a just a matter of days, I feel far away from them and it gets harder and harder to be close each time. And because I’m such a physical person and touch is my number one love language I get easily confused by the lack of it, or by the presumptuousness of it. This makes marriage incredibly painful at times. On top of that, I’m married to a man with an ex-wife and though he’ll tell me that marriage was anything but pleasant, all I can see of it is how wonderfully they get along now and how cooperative they are in their parenting efforts; and on occasion, I’ll accidentally run into some romantic remnant of their relationship together—making the entire thing seem so incredibly beautiful. And sometimes I only see the ugly parts of our marriage, and how it always seems too much to handle. But glimpses of the beautiful parts remind of the meaning of my life and I can’t give that up despite feeling overwhelmed and confused.

I once read that adopted children gain a greater sense of identity because they struggle harder to define themselves. Nothing seems healthier to me than really knowing who you are and what you want, so reading that made me happy for them. I think I have a strong sense of identity because of the struggles in my life and I like to think that struggling to make marriage fulfilling for the HB and I will hopefully someday give us a greater sense of unity than those who haven’t needed to. I like to think that.

compliments

Today at work we were discussing the FBI's lowering of the bar. Previously they've had a policy that incomers could never have even tried an illegal drug, but now they have to loosen up because it's too difficult to find people that have never even tried one.

So my co-worker paid me a pretty sweet compliment when he said I'd be perfect for the CIA, NSA, or FBI because I hold on to details like temperature, time, etc. He said I'm really good at recalling details in personal stories. I think I'm only good at it when it's a story that involves high emotionm, or something I feel strongly about. I mean, sometimes I forget how books end, but can practically retell random excerpts that I thought were very meaningful, that thus formed my opinion of the book, regardless of the story-line.

I remember in Amy Tan's book "The Kitchen God's Wife" when the main character reveals to her best friend what the worst day of her life was. Her best friend had been with her that day too, but she didn't remember that day standing out more than any other day at all, it was memorable, but not more horrible than others. The character then realizes how differently two people experiencing the same thing can be affected by it. I feel like that character a lot.